The present invention relates to systems and methods for processing, analysing and retrieving data content in a data storage system.
Information systems are known in which users can submit units of content, often referred to as posts or listings, for display to other users. Examples of such systems include collaboration systems, social media networks, e-commerce systems, video sharing sites, and the like. Search tools are generally provided to allow users to identify relevant posts or listings. However, in many such systems, the number of available posts or listings can be vast, and even using search tools, the results identified can still be overwhelming. Generally, only a limited number of results can be displayed on a user's screen (with limitations more severe on mobile devices). Furthermore, bandwidth limitations mean it is often undesirable to transmit full sets of results (which could comprise many hundreds or even thousands of listings) to a user device. Conventional approaches to tackling this problem sort results by posting date or time, so that only the most recent posts are presented, at least in a first group (or page) of results. However, there is no guarantee that these represent the most relevant or useful results, and this approach provides no flexibility in how the search results are ordered or which results are provided to the user.